Kelly O’Connor McNees

As someone who has moved around a lot in adult life, I’ve often had the opportunity (yes, I thought about putting that word in quotation marks) to navigate the awkward landscape of making new friends. As a book person, I tend to like the idea of people more than people themselves. I have realized, in my friend-making fits and starts, that I am an uncommitted introvert. When I find myself in a group of people, I crave solitude; when I’m alone, I wonder if it might be a little nicer to have someone nearby. You have my sympathies if this describes you too. It’s not an easy way to be.

From New York to Chicago to Providence to Ontario, I’ve tried basing friendships on all manner of interests: knitting, farmer’s markets, films, exercise—I was faking that one—teaching, writing . . . the list goes on. Some commonalities sustain two strangers longer than others, but there is just one that I’ve found to be a spot-on predictor of instant, lifelong friendship: Devotion to the food writer and novelist Laurie Colwin.

Laurie Colwin (1944-1992) is best known for her food columns in Gourmet, which were compiled and published in two books, Home Cooking (1988) and More Home Cooking (1993), but she also wrote a handful of wonderful novels and story collections with (arguably) unfortunate titles. These include Passion and Affect (1974), Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object (1975), Happy All the Time (1978), The Lone Pilgrim (1981), Family Happiness (1982), Another Marvelous Thing (1988), Goodbye Without Leaving (1990), and A Big Storm Knocked It Over (1993). Sadly, she died at the very young age of 48.

To read Laurie Colwin while in the kitchen is to gain a funny, sweet, and encouraging companion. She begins the introduction to Home Cooking with these words: “Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home.” A woman after my own heart.

From Laurie Colwin I learned how to bake bread “without agony,” how to plan a dinner party so fine that “no one will know how antisocial you really are,” and how to appreciate simple food. Consider this description of soup: “Soup embraces variety. There are silken cream soups that glisten on the spoon and spicy bisques with tiny flecks of lobster. There are broths in which float tiny tortellini and bouillons served in teacups on cold days . . .”

Happy All the Time, my favorite Colwin novel, is about two couples experiencing the joy, tenderness, discomfort, and humiliation of real love, the kind that changes your life. But the story is merely an excuse for Colwin to write passages like these:

She had her own ways, Holly did. She decanted everything into glass and on her long kitchen shelves were row upon row of jars containing soap, pencils, cookies, salt, tea, paper clips, and dried beans. She could tell if one of her arrangements was off by so much as a sixteenth of an inch and she corrected it. She was constantly fighting off the urge to straighten paintings in other people’s houses . . . She liked to have tea on a tray and she was fond of unmatched china. The tray she brought to Guido held cups that bore forget-me-nots, a lily-of-the-valley sugar dish, a cream pitcher with red poppies, and a teapot covered with red roses and cornflowers.

But here’s the thing about Laurie Colwin. Despite the sheer pleasure that resides in her writing, not very many people know about her. Her books are all still in print, the best sort of evidence of enduring interest, but somehow she has slipped through the cracks of most people’s literary knowledge. That’s just fine by me—it makes it all the easier to spot an ardent fan from a mile away. Love for Laurie Colwin’s writing is, by far, the best thing I have found to have in common with another person, and I’d feel safe basing an entire friendship upon it.

Are you in the mood to gush about Laurie Colwin too? Stop by and tell me all about it on my blog! http://kellyoconnormcnees.com/blog

Kelly O’Connor McNees lives in Chicago with her husband. Her first novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, was just published by Amy Einhorn Books / Putnam.

Here in New Mexico the saying goes that it’s not spring until the wind blows your patio furniture into your neighbor’s yard.  Using that criterion, spring has not yet sprung.  But it certainly has been teasing us.  We’ve had a few sunny days in the high 50’s and the juniper looks almost ready to begin torturing those of us who are allergic.

But this morning I woke up to about four inches of snow, and although our road is muddy enough for a tractor-pull, snowflakes continue to swirl even as I write.  It’s just the kind of day to put a pot of beans on the stove…or in the oven, whichever you prefer.  So I pulled out my micaceous clay bean pot and rinsed it out in anticipation of having black beans for dinner.

What, you might ask, is the big deal about a micaceous clay pot?

I’m so glad you asked, because I’m about to tell you.

Micaceous cookware has been used by native peoples of the Southwest for hundreds of years.  The pots are made from a special type of local clay that contains a high percentage of mica.  Softer and lighter than metal or glass, the pots are incredibly sturdy.  They’re still built by hand, using the “coil and scrape” method, and usually fired in open pits dug in the ground.

They turn out a beautiful coppery-gold color with black plumes called “fire clouds” where the pot has come into contact with the burning wood.  Mica is one of nature’s best conductors of heat, and it can absorb the shock of being placed over direct flame, as well an enabling the vessel to hold temperature extremely well.  The pot itself becomes almost like a small oven.  This is particularly useful for foods which normally take a long time to cook.  I can put a pot of dried beans on after lunch and it will be ready in plenty of time for dinner.  And there’s no need to soak the beans overnight (which I could never remember to do anyway.)

In addition to their beauty and practicality, it’s said that micaceous pots imbue food with a “sweet” taste—not like sugar sweet, but a clean, balanced flavor.  I love the way my pot smells when it’s wet, like the earth after a good rain, and the little soft sound it makes when the lid settles on the rim or I stir the beans with a metal spoon.  If I’m getting a bit rhapsodic about a common bean pot, it’s because this is actually an uncommon bean pot.

In fact, I like to think of it as my magic bean pot.

Here’s my favorite thing to make in my magic pot, but it can be made with great success in any soup pot.  It’s my version of a black bean recipe from The Nantucket Open House Cookbook by Sarah Leah Chase.  This recipe derives more from Cuban/Caribbean tradition than New Mexican, but it is wonderful.

For the beans:

1 ham hock (optional)

1 pound black beans, soaked overnight in cold water.  (if you have a magic bean pot, you can omit this step.)

½ onion (in one piece)

1 bay leaf

For the sofrito or seasoning:

⅓ cup olive oil

1½ Tbsp annatto seeds (optional, but available at Latin markets and gourmet grocers)

1 medium onion, diced

2 scallions, including green tops, minced

4 large cloves garlic

½ green bell pepper, seeded and diced

½ red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 fresh jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced (remember not to touch your eyes, nose or lips while working with hot peppers.)

2 Tbsp tomato paste

3-4 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1 Tbsp ground cumin

3 Tbsp minced fresh coriander leaves, AKA cilantro  (lots of people like this stuff.  It tastes like soap to me, so I substitute fresh Italian parsley.)

1-2 tsp salt (you can add more if you like, but be sure to taste first, especially if you’re using the ham hock.)

2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Drain the beans, if you soaked them.  Otherwise, simply rinse and drain.  Put in pot with ham hock (if using), half onion and bay leaf.  Add water to cover everything by about one inch.  Bring to boil over medium heat, then lower heat to simmer, cover and cook for 1½-2 hours, checking water level two or three times.  Alternatively you can bring to a boil on the stove and finish cooking in a slow oven 225-250°F.  The amount of time it will take for the beans to become tender will vary based on type of pot, age of beans, whether or not you soak the beans, and the altitude of your kitchen.  Here in Santa Fe at 7000 feet, things tend to take longer to cook.  This recipe usually runs about 2½-3 hours in a micaceous pot with no pre-soak.  Just keep checking it.  There’s nothing worse than crunchy beans.

While the beans are cooking, make the sofrito.

If you are using the annatto seeds, heat them in the olive oil over medium heat about 5 minutes or until they release their red/orange color.  Strain out the seeds and discard them.  Heat the flavored oil (or plain olive oil) in a medium skillet over med-high heat.  Add the onion, scallions, garlic, bell peppers, jalapeño and sauté, stirring frequently for 7 or 8 minutes.  Stir in tomato paste and vinegar; then add the oregano, cumin, salt and pepper.  Cook for 5 more minutes, then turn off heat and stir in cilantro (or parsley.)

Discard the half onion and the bay leaf.  Shred the meat from the ham hock and add to the pot, if desired.  Add the sofrito to the cooked beans and simmer for 30-45 minutes.  It should thicken a bit.  You can serve at once or set aside.  I personally like this better the second day.  Serve with your choice of rice, tortillas, cornbread, roast pork, grilled chicken, fish tacos, baked bananas, fried plantains, sour cream, chopped avocadoes…the possibilities are endless.  Enjoy!

Micaceous Clay Pots by Santa Fe artist Priscilla Hoback

Tom Schabarum

The Palisades is a book that has been waiting patiently in my drawer to be sprung upon the world for years.  Having written it over the course of four years, two of which were part of the John Rechy workshop in LA, and after many revisions, I put the book away for several reasons.  One, it dealt in a very oblique way with my relationship with my mother, two, another story I had in my head had to be told, and three, life happened.

It is hard to be a writer.  Single for most of my life with no other person to rely on to make ends meet, pick up my shoes, make me eat, etc. being a writer has been the foremost thing I wanted to always be.  But I also needed to make money and I do have a job I love, but it has kept me very busy over the years.

I’m not good at making lists, which is very important for a person to do if you send out manuscripts to a number of various publishers, agents, contests and the like.  It takes a sort of discipline that I lack.  In other words, I have no left brain.  As evidence, it takes me no less than five tries to get out of the house in the morning.

I also hear from writer friends that they spend a great deal of time marketing their books even when they are published by large houses.  I can spend just as much time marketing by utilizing Facebook, Twitter and researching literary blogs online that match the theme of my book on my own.  Sure, I’d love to have a publisher and go the traditional route, but that is changing by leaps and bounds as well.  I would rather an agent/publisher stumble upon or be led to my book, read the critiques that Amazon allows readers to post and then decide.  In the meantime, people are reading The Palisades, a conversation is starting and they are passing their opinions on to others, which has been deeply gratifying for this writer for this book.

All of which brings me to Amazon Kindle. I’ve been following the advent of e-reader technology now for a few years with interest.  Then, this year at CES 2010, e-readers were the talk of the show with several companies coming out with their own versions followed by Apple’s announcement of their iPad at the end of January.  It seems that the future is quickly coming upon us writers.

I still love the feel and touch of a book in my hand.  Turning each page, seeing how far I’ve read and how much more I have to go – when you’re reading Ulysses or War and Peace that’s saying something.  However, in Seattle we have the beautiful Olympic Sculpture Park, which contains a huge sculpture of a typewriter eraser complete with circular rubber wheel and feather brush top.  When I have young people in my car under thirty years old, I always ask them to identify it and none of them know what it is.  Hearing their answers keeps my mind pointing to the future and embracing it.

Books will live on, but they will not live on as those individual things in our hands that my generation and generations before me love so much.  Traditional books are going to go the way of cassette tapes, vinyl records, eight tracks. Just think of all the boxes you won’t have to move when you sell your house!

Books will, however, live on as stored files in e-readers or other devices and some will come alive with video, voice, photographs or better yet, written words that conjure up lives, locales and beauty as they have for centuries.

And people like me, a decent writer with no left brain, limited list making skills, and a need to write still more books in the time I have left, now have a place to put their books and let their friends and family read them if they wish for a nominal fee.  And if the book is well received as The Palisades is starting to be, it may have the chance to take on a life of its own, which has always been the point of writing, yes?

I feel as if I’m adding kindling to the fire that is the Kindle and many other devices that are on their way into people’s lives.  I may not please the writing establishment, but my intent is on pleasing the reader and holding up a mirror to their lives so that they can discover the things I did while writing mine.

Tom Schabarum is a creative director for live events and corporate communications in his alternate life.  The Palisades is his first novel.  He has another, The Narrows, Miles Deep, that he hopes to one day publish and yet one more nearly finished.  His poetry can be found online at pifmagazine.com.  He has also published essays in OUT Magazine and Alex Magazine.

He holds an MFA in creative writing and literature from Bennington College and a BA in cinematography from Brooks Institute of Photography.  He lives by and sails on Lake Washington in Seattle, WA.

The Palisades is currently available on Kindle at www.Amazon.com.

“We’ll buy something just as great when we settle in New Mexico,” my husband promised.

Famous last words.

Our rental house had an old gas stove that burned propane like it was breathing air.  The landlady suggested we blow out the pilot light when we weren’t actively cooking.  Well, that takes effort, and we forgot, until one cold morning I went to light the stove and nothing happened.  It was December, the propane tank was empty, and that day we learned how much extra it cost to have it filled the same day.  After something costs you an unreasonable amount, there’s resentment.  I made raspberry jelly on that stove, and lemon tarts my friend Judi keeps asking for, but there was never a bond between that stove and me.  I was not surprised when the new renters moved their own stove in and left the propane sucker in the garage.

Then we bought this house, a place we hope to stay for many years.  M.C. (Magic Chef), the electric stove that came with the place, I barely gave a second glance.  The first thing we planned to do was replace M.C. with gas.  I had visions of vintage stoves, double ovens, custom colors, of bread coming out of the oven with crusty brown top, of potatoes roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with Kosher salt and springs of rosemary, of my first Thanksgiving dinner turkey when my son came through on his way to his R.N. residency in Kentucky.

Alas.  To my dismay, we learned that to pipe gas to the house would cost more than it would have to move Vi King over international waters.  Sometimes you have to try to love things.  I cleaned M.C. up and dove right in to cooking electric.  In high altitudes it takes longer for things to boil.  Recipes must be adjusted, extended, and for every success there are ten failures.  I began buying double the ingredients for whatever I planned on making so I could throw away the mistake and proudly serve the success.

Then came the mouse.

Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, we live on a prairie.  Endemic to prairies are prairie dogs, mice, packrats, rabbits, coyotes, and so on.  Well, our house had been empty for a while, and it was over thirty years old.  There were gaps in places where the stucco meets the earth.  Mice can squeeze through envelope-thin spaces, and apparently had a regular route into the kitchen.  Picture the cartoon woman standing on a chair screaming, “Eek!”  and you have me learning that mice were in my kitchen.  I plugged steel wool in holes, wiped the counters down with bleach, never left a crumb of food out, and set humane traps.

One night I got up in the dark for a glass of water.  I walked into the kitchen, switched on the light and there, on top of M.C., was a mouse.  When I screamed, it jumped, and then it DISAPPEARED DOWN THE HOLE FOR THE ELECTRIC CONNECTION TO THE BURNER.  The mouse was not only in my kitchen, it was IN M.C., which never again stood for “Magic Chef,” but rather, “Mouse Central.”  My husband vowed that more humane traps would take care of things, and he even went so far as to relocate the mice to a remote area–how he still loves me after all these years is a mystery–but part of me will always see that little gray body slipping into the burner hole, headed God knows where.

Yet my issues with M.C. go deeper.

M.C.’s logo features a round body in a classy black tuxedo, like the maitre d of a fine French bistro.  He and his puffy little hat mock me daily.  Set M.C. at 425 to make a cherry pie, and he heats up to 425 in about ten minutes.  In goes the pie, and off I go to write or play with the dogs or read a book.  But when I return, M.C. will have turned himself up to 500.  HIS DIAL ACTUALLY TURNS BY ITSELF.  He scoffs at my curses.  I tell him, “First royalty check I get you’re gone, dude.”

Please buy more books because I’m still waiting.

Meanwhile, if I want my recipe to come out right, I have to babysit M.C.

But twice in my life, I had the best, though at the time I didn’t appreciate it.  Wisdom is reaped in retrospect, something my mom taught me by example.  Since man discovered fire, so much good in life has taken place around the hearth that one should not be engaged in battle with a stove.  On a snowy day like today, the sight of steam escaping the simmering soup pot, or the smell of gingerbread baking, or the aromatic steam of slow roasted elephant garlic coming out of the foil tent draws my husband into the kitchen.

“Hey, Good Lookin’,” he says.  “What’cha got cookin’?”

May all the stoves that served us arrive at the appliance corral, and catch the attention of someone like my mom.  Meanwhile, I’m saving my pennies and checking Craig’s List.  I know my new lover is out there somewhere, waiting.

Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of nine novels, most recently, The Owl & Moon Café. In Fall 2010, Bloomsbury U.S.A. and U.K. will publish Solomon’s Oak, her new novel.  She lives in Santa Fe with her husband and five dogs, where she is at work on a new novel.

I’ve had better.  Twice.

My first, best stove was a vintage, four-burner gas with a chrome griddle, two ovens and a broiler.  The top shelf folded down to cover the burners in sleek white enamel with a few character-inducing chips.  Vin T., I called him.  His stove innards were that deep cobalt porcelain with the white speckles.  So what if he had to be cleaned by hand?  I was twenty-three years old and thought I knew everything.  Decades later, I realize that Vin T. came into my life thanks to my mother’s fearlessness.  She found him for me at a used appliance store in the heart of Santa Ana, California, back when gangs were new and terrifying and women didn’t go such places alone.

Imagine her: five-foot nothing, ninety pounds, walking around the appliance corral and choosing Vin T.  Until recently, her world had been easy.  She had just moved into the custom built home she and my dad planned and worked toward for years.   But only two years later, he suddenly died of a heart attack.  He wasn’t even fifty.  Of all the things my mother could have been doing, she chose to venture out and find me a vintage stove.  I learned to cook on Vin T.  Bread never failed to rise in his always-warm oven thanks to his pilot light.

Pilot light:  a metaphor lost to history, thanks to the Energy Star appliances we’re encouraged to buy.  But there’s something about it I miss.  Like an ember in the woodstove, banked against the cold.  The tiniest stoke brings back fire, and fire is life, comfort, and a necessity.

We foolishly left Vin T. with the first house we owned when we moved to the ranch style tract home we’d live in for twenty-five years.  When the first house fell out of escrow, I suggested we go back and steal Vin T., but by then I had a new stove, and I talked myself into believing it was a better deal all around.  Over the years I’ve thought about Vin T. many times.  He was the Appaloosa horse of stoves, sturdy and uncomplaining.  I hope he’s still making somebody Sunday pancakes.

The cookers between Vintage and the Viking don’t bear remarking upon other than to say if we can make Mercedes automobiles and Volkswagens live forever, what is up with our cheap, ugly appliances?  Look at the gorgeous Aga cookers in the U.K.  Why America doesn’t make beautiful, curvy stoves I cannot figure.

Onto the Viking: my dream stove.  Vi King was the jewel of my newly renovated kitchen.  Stainless steel, with a matching hood.  A fan that sensed heat and turned on automatically.  Four, easy-to-clean, lift-out burners.  A switch for convection and regular gas heating.  A perfectly designed pullout tray that caught all the crumbs.  When I set Vi King to 400, she heated up in less than five minutes.  She delivered crusty bread, butter-seared halibut cheeks and far too many brownies than a middle-aged person should consume over eight Alaskan winters.  My only lament is that I was working so much that I didn’t have time to try everything Vi King was capable of cooking.  When we got ready to move back to the lower Forty-eight, I experienced that same sort of pang as I did for Vin T.  But Vi King was a behemoth, too heavy to move, and the buyers of our house were already in love with her, as well they should be.

“We’ll buy something just as great when we settle in New Mexico,” my husband promised.

To be continued…

It’s almost anti-climactic.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with this experiment, I built a pâte fermentée starter, also known as “old dough,” which doesn’t sound nearly as exciting.  I started from scratch, using only organic whole wheat flour and water…no commercial yeast.  The only yeasts involved are the natural yeasts in our good old New Mexico air and the ones that live on the wheat berries themselves.

The term “old dough” describes the way bread was made for ages uncounted before fresh yeast cakes or packets of dried yeast became widely available at the grocery store.  The way most people leavened their bread was by keeping back a piece of dough from each batch to jump start the next batch.  These starters were often handed down from mother to daughter.

But, of course, somebody had to have made that first starter.  Which is what I wanted to try.  And I finally succeeded.  From starter to dough to bread in 6½ days.  Good thing I’m not a pioneer woman, depending on this bread to feed my family.  Our bones would be bleaching on the prairie by now.

The loaves are smaller than I expected, which may be partly due to the cold weather–about 7″ in diameter and 3½” high.  I proofed them on flat sheets instead of in bannetons or bowls, so they were pretty flat before I put them in the oven.  But they’re attractive (I think) and delicious–moist and chewy crumb with a nutty grain flavor, thick, crisp/chewy crust.  They make fabulous toast.

So now I’m thinking…pain à l’ancienne baguettes like Phillipe Gosselin makes in Paris.  Or maybe a semolina bread such as Pane Siciliano, a traditional S-shaped bread from Sicily.  Or olive cheeks, adorable little rolls from Daniel Leader’s book Local Breads by way of my friend Susan Thomas’s incredible food blog, Farmgirl Fare.

That’s the amazing thing…so many breads, so little time.  And if you ever think you’ve finally got it all figured out, something new–a technique or a book or kind of bread you never even heard of–comes along and you just have to try it.  Not to mention quick breads…muffins and scones, biscuits, flatbreads…don’t get me started.

The good news: my starter has started!  See photo, left.

The bad news: So has the other starter I started when the first one didn’t start.

I know it sounds confusing, but when my natural levain was just sitting around getting chilblains, I got bored.  I figured it would be two or three more days before I’d be able to do anything with it.  So I made a poolish for a whole wheat bread with lemon, honey and poppyseeds.  This recipe came from Daniel Leader’s seminal work, Bread Alone.  Catchy title, eh?

The poolish method of bread making has been around for a long time.  I remember my gramma using it, only she called it a sponge, which doesn’t sound particularly appetizing.  It involves making a starter from a small portion of the total ingredients–in this case it was ¾ cup of water, 1 ¼ cup of flour, and ½ teaspoon dry yeast.  You mix that together and let it ferment anywhere from 2-10 hours and then use it as a base for your bread dough.  You get some of the advantages of a natural starter–kick-started yeast, enhanced taste, texture, and keeping ability, for instance–without having to wait five days for the starter to get ready.  Here’s how the whole wheat bread turned out.

But then, suddenly everything got ready at the exact same time.  So I had to make the dough for the whole wheat bread and then hurry up and do the next addition to the all natural levain.  My Heat & Heal pillow worked great.  You nuke it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes and then for the next 45 minutes to an hour, it radiates a lovely moist warmth.  It’s big enough to drape around aching shoulders, neck and other body parts.  And now I’m going to have to call my friend Jo Ellen Thompson, who makes them, and tell her I’ve discovered a whole new market for her creations.

We live in a 1949 Stamm house in Santa Fe (Stamm being the builder, who became somewhat of a legend in this town.)  Unfortunately, postwar builders apparently weren’t too eco-savvy, or maybe heating was cheaper then.  So, while I love my house, I usually spend the winter wearing long underwear and my heavy-duty fleece hoodie.

The warmest room in the house is the master bath (probably because of the room’s size relative to the heat vent) so it’s never a surprise to walk in and find the dog asleep on the rug, wet clothes drying, butter softening, or bread dough rising.  Which brings me to the subject of this post.

I’m making–or trying to make–a natural levain or starter from scratch.  No commercial yeast.  We have so many great bakeries in Santa Fe that finding great bread is never a problem.  Someone asked me the other day why I bothered to spend five days building a starter, then another two making country French bread.

Answer: Because it’s fun.  And because I can.

Well, this person continued, what about the (old) new, no-knead bread baking methods that are all over the internet now, where you simply mix flour water, yeast and salt, let it sit for 18 hours and bake it off.  Presto…instant artisan bread.

Answer: The words “instant” and “artisan” don’t belong in the same sentence.

Yes, I’ve tried that method.  Beginning in 1999 when Suzanne Dunaway’s book, No Need to Knead, was published.  I’ve also tried Kneadlessly Simple by Nancy Baggett and My Bread by Jim Lahey and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg.  They all make good bread.  Very good bread, actually.  But not the best, in my opinion.  I find the texture leaves something to be desired, not to mention the depth of flavor.  And really, now, what’s the big fuss about kneading?  Ten minutes by hand, six to twelve minutes when my tendonitis is kicking up and I have to resort to the KitchenAid.  To me, having my hands in dough is the most pleasurable part–other than eating the bread, of course.

Right now it’s cold outside and we’re getting our first real snow of the winter.  I like being in the kitchen, and it doesn’t take but 15 or 20 minutes more with the kneading and shaping than it would with the no-knead method.  So I decided to try one of the “formulas” from Peter Reinhart’s Crust and Crumb.  Peter is one of my bread heroes… ever since I read Brother Juniper’s Bread Book back in 1991.

I’m an intuitive baker, but I accept the fact that baking is somewhat of a science and, particularly when making a starter, a formula comes in handy.  Although, having said that, I realized yesterday morning (Day 2) that here at 7000 feet, high and dry, the 1/3 cup water called for just wasn’t enough to hydrate the fairly dry seed from yesterday plus another 4.5 oz of bread flour.  So I ended up adding another few tablespoons of water.

The second day refreshment was done, although it hadn’t risen much, if at all.  According to Peter, that wasn’t a problem.  It was a problem, however, that by this morning (Day 3) it still hadn’t budged.  And the formula says not to move on to the next step until the starter has doubled in size.  Of course, it didn’t help that we had a power failure during the night and the house, even the bathroom, had the approximate ambient temperature of a meat locker when we got up this morning.

So right now my starter is cosseted in the microwave with my Heat & Heal pillow, which I nuked for four minutes and which is now radiating a lovely warmth.  I feel like I should put a little knit hat and scarf on my poor, chilly starter.  Hopefully, as the dough warms up, those little wild yeasts will get active.  We’ll see.  Stay tuned…

Midway through Judi Hendricks’ latest novel, The Laws of Harmony, the heroine, Sunny Cooper, listens politely as her new co-worker and friend, Freddie Russell, describes the romance novel she’s been writing. Freddie is quick to explain that books about nature and biology– the subjects of her college studies– don’t sell too well.

“I’ve heard it’s hard to get published,” Sunny says.
“I know,” Freddie concurs, “but somebody’s got to make it. Might as well be me.”

Anyone who has ever written a novel with publication in mind knows that Sunny speaks the truth, while Freddie, for her part, displays a matter-of-fact toughness that should help ward off the rejection-letter blues. The conversation has a ring of authenticity to it, a correctness of detail typical of the hundreds of small exchanges that collectively give The Laws of Harmony and its characters a compelling quality. Yet Sunny’s observation about the publishing world hardly qualifies as a newsflash. Obviously Freddie gets that– she’s already gone as far as to choose a book genre based on potential sales.

I’d like to believe you can program a book for success and, because I found Freddie to be an appealing character, as I read this scene I also found myself wishing right along with her that it were true. Why shouldn’t Freddie be able to position herself to be the next shining light in the literary constellation? Aside from some nature books, her home reading selection is made up of “mostly bestsellers and romance novels”, Sunny tells us after secretly perusing the living-room bookshelf, So Freddie knows the medium, which is an important first step. So then, can’t a talented, determined writer just pick a genre and get going?

Yes, I suppose.  And … no.

Yes, because others have done it. Before he became a mystery and police procedural writer, Michael Connelly took a job as a crime-beat reporter for a Miami newspaper, soaking in every on-the-job detail he could for use in future novels. Janet Evanovich first tried her hand unsuccessfully at literary writing before turning, like Freddie, to romance novels. Before he became the dean of all modern crime-fiction writers, Elmore Leonard churned out numerous paperback Westerns, a few of them brilliant– Hombre and Valdez is Coming are classics– because … well, that’s what was selling in the late fifties.

Yet, beneath the surface with these three writers something more than cold-eyed calculation was also at work. Call it a high level of dedication. Persistence. Devotion. A passion that can’t be faked. Yes, Connelly pursued a job to dovetail neatly with his writing aspirations, but think of the commitment this must have taken– waking in the middle of the night to the blast of a telephone; the bleary-eyed drives down empty highways; the bad coffee; having to wade through endless cop jargon and official doublespeak (nobody ever simply steps out of a car, they have to “exit the vehicle”) to get the story. Evanovich spent a decade attempting to write serious novels, toiling over three consecutive manuscripts that never saw the light of day, before discovering, through perseverence, what she did best; slowly she gravitated toward romance and stuck with it because she believed she had a few things to say about women who suffer through bad relationships and keep trying anyway. As for Leonard, those one-horse towns and open prairies may seem to have merely served as an early practice field for the far more popular stories he would later set in the dive bars and prisons and decaying mean streets of urban America, but every Western he ever wrote carried with it the tight, slyly moralistic, dialogue-driven style that sets him apart.

So yes, an author can consciously chose a genre and find success as a result– but not without a distinct passion for telling that type of story.

No, I’d say, one cannot just choose a genre in eenie-meenie-miney-moe fashion and reasonably expect to make real headway. For one thing, the field of writing is full of specialized authors who do what they do very well, so unless you’re ridiculously talented it’s unlikely you’ll distinguish yourself– let alone be published– by going through the motions. And writing a book is such a long, arduous endeavor, why would any sane person commit to such a laborious journey armed with anything less than an unshakable conviction that theirs is a story that simply must be told?

Getting back to Freddie Russell, had she invited me over that night and asked me what I thought of her on-again, off-again work on a romance novel, I’d have told her that was just fine, as long as she was being true to herself. If I’d had some wine and got to talking a bit, I’d probably also have said: never mind the genre, Fred, and while you’re at it, forget the industry’s future sales projections and latest identifiable trends– the publishing world is loaded with smart, sensitive people who haven’t a clue about how business really works. I’d have told her to firmly, consistently tune out any know-it-all friends and relatives who think they know better. And finally, before she kicked me out for talking too much, I’d have said: live inside the story you want to tell, cherish the characters you bring to life. Love the process. This way, whatever success comes along will truly be yours.

POSTSCRIPT:

Here’s an odd pair of surprises worth reporting: I wrote the above remarks without having noticed a brief Q-and-A interview with the author that’s tucked into the back pages of The Laws of Harmony, but lo and behold, there it was yesterday morning as the commuter train delivering me to work in downtown L.A. lurched through a rough patch of tracks and Judi’s book fell out of my briefcase. Surprise Number 2 came when, upon reading the Q-and-A, I noted that Judi was asked to what extent she actively resisted writing “works that can be categorized by genre or theme”, as The Laws of Harmony seemed to combine “mystery, romance, self-discovery, and all things culinary.” Judi answered by explaining that these elements are included in the book because she finds real life to be a “fascinating pastiche” of just such elements. In other words, the novel is a direct reflection of the world as Judith Ryan Hendricks alone sees it.

I’ll take that as the author’s endorsement of my advice to Freddie.

A final note: setting the literary labeling and genre-talk aside for a moment, there is one simple term of art that neatly describes a novel like The Laws of Harmony, the kind of story that springs not from a deft marketing strategy but instead is born purely from the inside out. Such a book is referred to as “an original work of fiction.”
-John DeCure

John DeCure is a third-generation Californian and lifelong surfer whose three novels are set in and around the greater Los Angeles and beach communities in which he grew up. He graduated from California State University at Fullerton in 1981 with a degree in English before entering law school in 1987. His novels, Reef Dance and Bluebird Rising, were published by St. Marti
n’s Press; both books feature attorney and surfer J. Shepard as their protagonist. In the Spring of 2009 he completed the manuscript of a third, stand-alone novel, Tell You What I’m Gonna Do, which is set in the hard-knock world of outside sales. DeCure lives in Long Beach, California with his wife and three young sons. His fiction and non-fiction pieces have appeared in Surfer magazine and The Surfer’s Journal for many years. A long-time prosecutor, he is a senior deputy attorney general with the Office of the Attorney General in Los Angeles.

Some writers tend to ruminate, and I’m one of those. Like agonizing endless minutes over the menu for a take-along picnic. It was for an evening of blues at the Hollywood Bowl with a sorta friend, the kind who might get to be something else, only nobody’s sure what or knows when.

As my polar opposite, he likes lists and categories, so in deciding what to take, I knew I was walking some dangerous edge between a misleading romantic evening with handmade chocolate truffles to feed each other like mama bird/baby bird, on the one hand; and an unfairly contemptuous takeout of curled meat on dry bread from some fast-food vomitorium on the other. Either was likely to send the wrong message. I needed to seek the middle ground, and at first, I thought past experience might be a guide.

I can cook, but I immediately realized that would be ill-advised since it had happened once before and might lead him to expect it again in this lifetime. Yes, I made the guy a sandwich once, and he wanted to know exactly everything that went into it. I don’t usually go by recipes unless there’s going to be real company, so a dish may be different from one time to the next. Below is the list I spoke to him.
Any measured amounts would be entirely fanciful, so I’ll leave it to you as better cooks to suit your taste. It’s pretty good, like tuna salad, only better:

Patricia’s Slapdash Salmon Salad

One 14.75-ounce can pink salmon (all canned salmon is wild caught; did you know that?)
Ingredients chopped fine:
Celery
Green onion
Green pepper
Dill pickle
Capers
Parsley and dill weed, fresh or dried
Mayonnaise
Nonfat plain yogurt

Take out and discard some of the edible skin and/or bones, if you prefer. (I dislike the idea of eating a spine, even if it is full of calcium!) Deposit fish chunks in a medium-sized bowl, and break them apart with a fork. Add chopped ingredients, parsley and dill weed. Dress with a half-and-half mixture of mayonnaise and yogurt, mixing thoroughly. (You won’t taste the yogurt.)

Although this concoction had been entirely satisfactory spread on La Brea Bakery wholegrain bread from Costco, I decided to butt out completely and turn to the professionals. I meandered up to the Continental Deli, a German concern where the sandwiches taste so good that whenever I tuck into one, I want to cry with gustatory joy. The rye bread is softer than a down pillow, the mustard has a nice head-kick, and the meat is so–well, it may cause you to hear heavenly choirs of moos and oinks, even if you’re ordinarily a carnivorous nonbeliever.

I asked about alternatives to the potato salad that comes on the side with a dill pickle. The Sandwichmeister reeled off a few options, took in my expectant expression at the end of the list, and gave me a pitying stare. “We’re not coleslaw people,” he explained dryly. I went with the default potato salad, first because it boasted a short list of ingredients for my friend to digest–potatoes, cooked eggs, and mayonnaise–but also because the potatoes appeared to have been riced, unusual and probably excellent for texture. And yes, it put the sandwich in the spotlight in the same way a sideman–say, a terrific bass player or a background vocalist–enhances a star like Buddy Guy.

In addition to the fresh-peach streusel I got at the deli, I threw in some grapes from Trader Joe’s. Last, after apologizing to the planet in advance for the environmental assault of plastic flatware and cups but attempting to retain a bit of my character with cloth napkins I would take home and launder for reuse, I flipped the picnic basket closed, filling the outside woven cylinders with bottles of sparkling water and wine, and there it was–enough, but not too much.

Many native Californians, myself included, pride themselves on their ability to cork wine effortlessly. My friend brought some nice old French stuff that he opened quite competently for a Midwesterner, and I took a backup bottle of Domaine Alfred Syrah in case we wanted it later. We enjoyed our on-rye sandwiches–corned beef for him, turkey and Black Forest ham for indecisive me–on a spacious patio before the concert. As the sun set, we loitered up the motorized conveyer belt to the stars, found our bench, and settled in happily to hear great music.

During intermission, we had dessert, and as the lights went out for the second time, my friend mentioned that other bottle of wine. I whisked it out, sliced the foil off in one clean circuit of the knife, plunged the corkscrew point into the target, twisted, clamped and extracted–all in the dark, as though blindfolded with a linen napkin.

Of course, he couldn’t see either, which is actually good. Same thing with the food–excellent, but nothing fraught with implications. Wouldn’t want him to think I was showing off for him when we’re just friends, right?

Patricia McFall has published both long and short fiction, as well as non-fiction that includes book reviews and features on books and authors. She has privately edited more than a dozen trade books and thousands of manuscript pages in addition to teaching, coaching and editing many writers. Her story “On the Night in Question” will appear in the anthology Orange County Noir from Akashic Press in April 2010.